Lighting | Home Lighting Shop | Light Fixtures Online

Lighting a room in three layers

A room with one bright fitting in the middle of the ceiling is lit and nothing else. What makes a room work is three kinds of light doing three different jobs: ambient light overhead for general visibility, task light at a wall or a table for reading and working, and accent light aimed at whatever is worth looking at. Almost everything in this range belongs to one of those three, and the product pages say which.

Chandeliers

Four of them, and the choice between them is finish and scale rather than style vocabulary. The wrought iron six-light is the warm, rustic one at 53cm. The tiered farmhouse crystal is the smallest at 50cm and the easiest to place. The modern chandelier puts crystal on a black frame, which reads contemporary instead of period. The nine-light raindrop is the largest at 71cm and the one that changes a dining room.

Ceiling and pendant lights

A flush mount is what goes in when a pendant will not: 14cm deep, damp rated, and out of the way of a door. A pendant is what goes in when there is height to spare and something worth hanging over. The 90cm kitchen island bar is the answer to the specific problem of a long worktop lit by a round fitting, which leaves the middle bright and the ends dark.

Wall lights and bathroom lighting

Wall lights split into two jobs. Up-and-down sconces wash the wall and suit a corridor, a staircase or a bedside. A swing arm with its own dimmer knob is a reading light you control from where you are lying, not from the door. Above a mirror, the rule that decides everything is width: pick a fitting two thirds to three quarters of the mirror, which is why the vanity bars come in three lengths.

Outdoor lighting

Almost all of it is solar, and that is deliberate: a mains garden light means a trench, armoured cable and an electrician, while a solar one means pushing a stake into the ground. The honest division within the range is between lights that illuminate and lights that decorate. The pathway lights, the spotlight and the driveway lights do the first. The firework lights and the eight-piece garden set do the second, and their pages say so in plain words rather than calling three lumens bright.

Before you order

Most returns come from one of three things nobody checked. The width of the mirror or the table the fitting is going over. The bulb the fitting takes and whether it is included. And whether a fitting carries an IP rating, which decides whether it may go in a bathroom at all. Every product page states all three.

If you are unsure, email us at theteam@modernlight.uk before you order and a real person will tell you straight whether it suits.